From pork to Prince to Project Runway.

Posts from March 2009

March 30, 2009

I love risotto, so it's no surprise that I also love pasta cooked as if it were risotto.

And, so, this gemelli pasta cooked risotto-style with carrots is one of my favorite new pastas: the pasta ends up with a delicious chewy texture, and it's sweet from the carrots and salty from the cheese and, err, salt. I also usually toss in a bit of fresh thyme and some chile de arbol with the onions, because they give it some extra depth. It's really good! We love it.

March 25, 2009

Morrissey seems extremely comfortable in his skin these days, often coming across on stage and in the excellent covers of his three most recent albums as though he has waited his entire life to be exactly as old as he is right now. He wears his age very well, and it provides him with a bit of gravitas that serves him well, particularly when he sings his most petulant lyrics. His sex appeal now is actually quite similar to that of 30 Rock-era Alec Baldwin. Both men have a handsome, bearish quality, with substantial yet lean bodies capable of surprising grace. They both have very strong presences, and when you look at them, it’s hard not to picture a younger, softer version of their face buried just beneath the heavy masculinity of their adult visage.

This being the most obvious evidence of his being pleased with self, of course:

March 21, 2009

I have terrible college-food associations with carbonara: gluey, overcooked strands of pasta held together by half-cooked pieces of ham. This orecchiette carbonara is completely different, obviously, and it's absolutely delicious and fresh: it's spring, now, and we found fresh English shelling peas at the farmers market this morning. Combined with diced bacon and pancetta, and thyme, onions, and garlic, and eggs, &c., it's so delicious. And isn't Suzanne Goin charming talking about the dish?

March 14, 2009

It started last summer, when I made the grilled pork burgers recipe from the Lucques cookbook--ground pork, chorizo, and bacon burgers, topped with romesco and manchego cheese: yes, they're incredible--but it's kicked in properly over the last couple of weeks, as I've been making burgers from Great Burgers.

Thus far, our favorite has been the Negimaki burgers, with the Picadillo burgers (which I made tonight) a close second. But the best part is perfecting the mixing, the timing, and the process of making the burger: I like to get better and better at things as I make them more often, and the benefit of burgers is that I can make many variations on the burger whilst still improving the basic techniques.

March 09, 2009

Working to ban something that 99% of people never eat is not an act requiring great moral or physical courage in the same vein as was, say, the fight for civil rights in the U.S. or the fight for self rule in India. By comparison, the anti-foie gras movement is – at best – founded upon a shrewd political calculation in which the professed indignation of a few is used to harness the indifference of the many to the inherent political cowardice of elected officials, in order to achieve a desired political outcome. In essence, it's a confidence game in which participating meat-eaters, by agreeing to condemn something that they don't care about, receive the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail card, i.e., the right to feel slightly less guilty as they bite into that factory-farmed McNugget.

But then, two things happened: one, I remembered how pleased I was hearing Scissor Sisters' cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" a number of years ago, and that what pleased me most, at first, was thinking of apoplectic Pink Floyd fans hearing the song for the first time, and ranting and raving about the song being absolutely destroyed for them; and, two, that when I actually listened to it, Scissor Sisters' take on "Do the Strand" sounded exactly like you'd imagine a SS take on "Do the Strand" to sound like, and that that was really quite okay, and if I'm being honest, very enjoyable.

March 06, 2009

Tonight, I've been keeping an eye on the launch of the Kepler satellite, which is heading out in search of Earth-like planets. (Well, to be fair--I'm mostly just looking for pretty pictures, like the one below.)

Obama's managerial instincts tend toward a looser operation, with lots of staff and outside input. ... [But] early in his Senate career Obama also learned the perils of not having one strong manager in charge. When he arrived in Washington, in 2005, he told one of his senior aides, "My vision of this is having six smart people sitting around the table batting ideas around." A month and a half later, tensions erupted between Obama's Chicago staff and his Washington staff, making it difficult for them to agree on his schedule. Obama was frustrated that no single person was able to make decisions. The aide reminded him, "Don't you remember: 'six smart people sitting around the table'?" Obama replied, "Oh, that was six weeks ago. I'm not on that now."